


A Compilation of General Fandom Meta

by Beth Harker (Beth_Harker)



Category: No Fandom, Original Work
Genre: Archived from tumblr icouldwritebooks, Essays, Fandom Meta - Freeform, Meta, writing tips and thoughts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-02
Updated: 2020-03-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:36:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 4,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22988023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beth_Harker/pseuds/Beth%20Harker
Summary: A compilation of fandom thoughts, essays, and writing tips.  Originally posted on icouldwritebooks (tumblr).
Kudos: 2





	1. Tips for fic writers who want to be read

**Author's Note:**

> So! This stuff is here mostly for archival purposes. A few of these are writing tips. They were not written from a place as seeing myself as a especially good author, but rather because I’m a person who likes reading writing tips, and they won’t exist if nobody writes them. Anyway, here are my ramblings. Have fun with them. I’m also totally up for discussing anything in the comments.

**Tips for Fan Fic Writers Who Want To Be Read**

I’m writing this as somebody who has been writing and fan fiction and posting it on the Internet for something along the lines of 19 years, as well as actively reading the stuff.

1\. If you are writing fan fiction, you are amazing. Thank you. What you are doing is writing stories for free that others are going to get to consume and enjoy. You’re bringing pleasure to people who you don’t know, all over the world. Hopefully you are enjoying yourself as well. Good job.

2\. Somebody is reading your stories. You know that story you wrote, with very little notes and reviews? Somebody read it. Somebody even enjoyed it. You might not always get the number of notes that you want, but you aren’t writing into a void.

3\. Somebody is -going to- read your stories. I have this one fanfiction.net account from 2001. In 2001 I was like an infant or something. I was dyslexic. I mean, I totally still am, but it showed more then. So many typos. Every once in a while I’ll still get a review on one of those stories. The reviews are mostly positive. There are people today reading and having a positive response to those little stories I wrote as a child, about the things that mattered deeply to me back then, and it’s really cool. If you write a story, and it doesn’t get the response you want it to right away, don’t write it off as a failure. It might surprise you down the line.

4\. But seriously. These stories you write? Unless you take them down, they are there forever. Sometimes I stumble upon stories with fantastic characterization and great plots, but get super nostalgic because they’ve brought up aim instant messenger away messages or something. Your stories are there forever. They are a gift to your fandom. They last.

5\. If you choose to write a little bit for a smaller fandom, your stories have a greater staying power. The same goes for small ships. Naturally, you are going to write mostly for whatever catches your attention and inspires you, and if that is the behemoth that is superewholock or whatever, so be it. That said, if you ever feel inspired to write a story for that movie that has about ten fics on the Internet in total, do it. Absolutely do it. Maybe you won’t get a ton of initial reaction, but reviews might be trickling in for years or decades.

6\. There are lots of people who are searching for a certain fan fiction with a certain plot. It is the story of their heart. You never know if you are writing the plot that somebody has been dreaming about and searching endlessly for. If you have a plot that you are endlessly searching for, consider writing it yourself.

7\. Maybe you have a plot that you think about as you are going to sleep at night. Maybe you don’t want to write it, because it seems to self-indulgent or trope filled or whatever. Write it. That’s probably the story somebody else wants to read. Self-indulgent fan fics are often the really good ones.

8\. Consider participating in Yuletide. If you don’t know what that is, Google search it (mostly because I can’t do html and pretty links on mobile…). It’s a yearly fanfiction exchange where people request stories they desperately want to read in rare fandoms. All of the stories that I’ve gotten the most reviews on were for that event. It’s a big deal, and good fun, because you know that no matter what else, you will be writing somebody’s ideal dream story. 

9\. Fic exchanges in general. Same goes for prompts. If somebody is leaving you a writing prompt, you have one nearly guaranteed reader, who will probably be super fond of your fic. 

10\. Don’t be afraid to reach out to writers that you like. If you have a favorite writer in a fandom, consider asking them to read your story and give their opinion. Be polite about it, and make if clear that they are under no obligation. Some will say no, because they are busy or whatever, but I’m willing to bet that a good percentage of people will be willing to look at your work if they are specifically sought out and asked to do so.

11\. There is something good about most stories. I’m completely serious about this. You’d never believe how much fan fiction I’ve read. I don’t think I’ve ever read anything that I could say nothing positive about.

12\. Give the reviews that you’d like to receive. Encourage other writers. When I first started writing, I had so many problems that are super obvious to me now. I still have problems, that will become obvious to me down to the road (if they were obvious to me now, I’d fix them. Obviously.). Back to the whole dyslexic thing. When if first started writing, I was a kid who couldn’t reliably spell the word “friend” correctly. I got positive feedback from fanfiction that I never got at school. As a result, I wrote and wrote and spent over half my life writing, and right now I have a job (which I’m very good at!) which hinges on my ability to write and use language well. If you finish somebody’s story, try to leave a word or two of encouragement. If there is a part that you like, tell them about it. It’s worth it. If the story seems like it’s written by a twelve year old, all the more reason to leave a nice note. Maybe you are helping somebody learn to believe in themselves as a writer, in a world where being a writer is a huge asset, as communication is becoming increasingly text based.

13\. Even if you write a fic that has defied all the laws of Internet, and never found a single reader, if you enjoyed writing it, then that’s fine. It’s still a good story, and it’s still an accomplishment.


	2. Things I remember about fandom culture in the early 2000s (tales from the in between times)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: mentions rape and homophobia.

I’m writing about around 2000-2008 here, so fanfiction.net was established, livejournal came to be a thing, and it definitely wasn’t the olden days of zines or early Internet mailing lists, but it was different from today.

\- fanfiction.net used to host a lot of things that it doesn’t host today, like RPF, original fiction, humor lists, NC-17 rated stuff, original poetry, etc. The original fiction hosting was nice, because you could put your original stuff under the same account as your fan fic, and sometimes people who liked your fan fic would go read it. Readership of original fiction dropped a ton when it moved over to fictionpress.com (and the loss of lists was genuinely upsetting. I had so many ridiculous “signs that you are a dragon” or “you know you’re obsessed with Star Trek Voyager when” type lists).

\- Geocities “shrines” were very much a thing! They were so terrible and so wonderful. I miss my like ten geocities pages. Even aside from geocities, having your own site to host your stuff on instead of just putting it on fanfiction.net or some kind of blogging platform was the epitome of Internet cool, and seemingly a lot easier to do than it is today.

\- Archiving was a thing! Usually one would put a little note on the top of their fics about whether or not it was okay for people to archive them on their geocities sites or whatever.

\- We wrote disclaimers on everything, but I think at this point people were also bored with disclaimers, because the disclaimers were ridiculous. Some of them were haikus. A lot of them were lengthy protestations about how very poor we were, filled with words of love for the specks of lint in our pockets that the powers that be were going to get if they sued us.

\- There were epic author’s notes for everything.

\- There was a whole debate over whether or not all slash needed to be rated NC17, which I think for a lot of authors led to the idea that if they were going to write slash, which was by necessity explicitly rated, then they better deliver the goods. As a kind of prudish kid, I was terrified of slash and would not open it, despite being a pretty outspoken baby lesbian.

\- While we are on slash debates, I remember people discussing whether or not slash just meant having a character date someone of a gender they wouldn’t normally date, therefore if canonically gay characters were written as straight, that was also slash.

\- Further adventures in slash debate - the ongoing discussions about whether or not it was realistic to have more than two gay characters in a story. Because statistics. There were people who wrote entire essays about how it was just statistically unlikely for one gay couple to encounter another gay couple, which in retrospect was very weird. 

\- Battles about the evil child corrupting nature of slash aside, it seems like nobody much questioned the morality of what you were writing. Rape fic? Go for it. Abusive relationships? Totally fun and edgy, right? Your would be slash stud has a canon female love interest?? Kill her. Or make her evil. eeeevil. Why would you not?? Also, don’t question how stereotypes and harmful social trends might be causing you to write a character the way you are. While I think that fandom purity culture of today takes things way too far, I think it’s good that some things like killing any female character who gets in the way of your ship are more frowned upon, and abuse stories are less transparent. Like, ultimately I think that people should be able to write what they want, but recent changes to the whole fandom zeitgeist have produced some interesting results. 

\- Remember that time a certain author of a certain series of popular vampire books started actually suing her fans, because I certainly do (note: it didn’t stop fanfiction).

\- Some terms that abounded: Lemons, limes, pwp, drabbles (which had to be exactly 100 words, it was a rule), vignettes, squicks, flames…

\- If you liked writing about musicals, there was just one section on fanfiction.net to cover all of musical theatre.

\- Then there was livejournal, and the days when everything happened on livejournal. Those were fun days.

\- Comments. Comments were often long, and beautiful, and glorious. Sometimes they came “from” a character from canon, or in the form of the commenter writing a pretend dialogue between themselves and a canon character. Constructive criticism was a bigger also a thing, but so were flames. I remember a group of people debating about whether or not the kudos button being added on AO3 (it wasn’t always there) would bring about the death of comments..

\- Mary Sues were the plague. Painstaking effort that went into not making your female characters Mary Sues. Glad fandom seems to be over that.

\- There was no such things as headcanons. Those are a really cool thing that we didn’t have when I was a kid


	3. How to Tell if Somebody is Fandom!Old

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: When I originally posted this on tumblr, it was mostly well received, but a few people worried that I was making fun of older people in fandom, or suggesting that older people shouldn’t participate. That’s totally not the case! As somebody who isn’t _old_ old, but has nearly 20 fandom years under my belt, I was going for a jokey listicle that observes how things have changed.

\- They use terms like lemons, vignette, or UST to talk about the genre of their fic.

\- They have squicks.

-They want you to have squicks. Which isn’t to say that they want to squick you, just that it’s a useful term.

-*glomps*

-They leave long comments on everything the read. Possibly not in the tags. They might do something super bizarre like send a message or put their thoughts on the end of your post.

-They write disclaimers on everything. Or on literally anything, since nobody does that anymore.

-They write about orbs, and those orbs are cerulean.

-Or literally anything else is cerulean. Cerulean is an outdated term. I’m calling it.

-The tongues of their characters are still battling for dominance, even though it’s 2017, and really a winner should have been declared by now.

-They have a fear of Mary Sue.

-Characters in their modern AU are chatting on AIM instant messenger, and calling each other on landlines. There are references to Ceiling Cat, because the characters are hip to meme culture. This AU is ~modern~ after all.

-Their fic is interlaced with slightly relevant song lyrics (disclaimer, they didn’t write the song.)

\- They don’t do any of above, because they are New Fandom Savy, but they write or reblog nostalgic posts about these things.

-They had a livejournal.

-They still have a livejournal.

-They ended up on tumblr only after getting into a new fandom, searching livejournal for content and fellow fans, and suddenly coming to the startling realization that livejournal has become a barren wasteland of tumbleweeds and chirping crickets.

-They miss their geocities site.

-They wrote fic for the X-Files while the original nine seasons were still airing.

\- Bonus, they wrote fic for the original Star Trek and published it in a zine, before the Internet was a thing. That’s like super mega fandom old.

-They might be less inclined to call themselves “trash”, but they are totally out there, reading all the things.


	4. Stages of Fandom Involvement

1\. Discover the Thing. Watch it, read it, listen to it, whatever.

2\. Lol, this thing is pretty good.

3\. No, no I’m totally not getting into this thing.

4\. This is a casual interest. I’ll just look up fan fiction to see if it exists for this particular thing.

5\. Now I’ll read all of said fan fiction.

6\. Okay, I’ll write something, but just as a one off.

7\. I’ll engage with the source material a million times over, create a blog, create volumes and volumes of fan fiction, interact with other fans…

8\. I actually never bother with the source material anymore, but dear god am I ever writing stuff.

9\. The pairing/character that originally brought me into the fandom bores me now. Time to write about everyone else, especially minor characters with no lines. A lot.

10\. Well, I have nothing else to write about. Better keep going with the Thing.

11\. A new thing?

12\. No, there is no new Thing. I’m just writing a one off fan fic for a random piece of media to test my ability.

13\. Feel slightly distressed that interest in old Thing has plummeted to zero. Is new Thing worth this sudden investment? Was old Thing?

14\. Years pass. Nostalgia fondness of the old Thing. Ocassional old Thing binges.

15\. Start occasionally writing fic for the old Thing again.


	5. Thoughts about Elitism in the Musical Theatre fandom

Way way back in the early(ish) days of my theatre nerdery, Wicked was the shiny new thing, and god was there ever backlash against it in the theatre fandom. I was active on some of the major theatre forums at the time, and admitting any kind of fondness for the Wicked would have been greeted with approximately the same level of disdain as walking into a room full of eleven-year-olds and telling them your favorite TV program was Barney the Dinosaur.

There was a lot of talk about which shows were for real, enlightened theatre fans, and which were for fake ones. Avenue Q, Light in the Piazza, and Sweeney Todd were good shows for smart people. Wicked, Wicked, Wicked, and anything by Wildhorn or Webber were dumb shows for the illiterate fangirling masses. Les Mis was okay to like as long as you didn’t like Eponine and admitted that On My Own was popular drivel.

So, anyway, at the time, I paid a lot of attention to this. I hated Wicked because it just seemed like the thing to do. I didn’t give up on Wildhorn and Webber, because I was in pretty deep with them, but wow did I spend a lot of time trying to prove that I wasn’t one of those stupid fake fans who couldn’t understand Sondheim or whatever. I got into Piazza and Sweeney Todd, which wasn’t bad in and of itself (I still -adore- Piazza, and seeing Sweeney Todd on Broadway was a great experience), but it was super performative at the time.

In retrospect, it was such a waste of time. Liking musical theatre is so much more fun if you don’t run around trying to think of what shows the enlightened theatre people are into, and which shows have “cringy” fandoms, and which songs have committed the crime of being Too Relatable and must be forever ignored as a form of penance. If you are into the big shows now, enjoy them. Rest assured that ten years from now they might still be popular, but the fandom activity will have died down to a dull roar, and the elitists will have picked out some other new show to single out as the thing that fake fans like.

Popular and relatable doesn’t equal bad, or unintellectual. Hell, intellectual and complicated doesn’t equal good. Liking obscure things doesn’t make you smarter, though it may mean that you’ve gone further down the theatre rabbit hole, and have some cool battle stories to share with the rest of the fandom. Hating the current popular shows is fine, if you genuinely don’t like them, but don’t wear that hatred like it’s a badge of honor. Debating which shows do X better, or are the most innovative, or whatever else is great, as long as it isn’t done from a place of trying to prove your intellectual superiority. If you legitimately have some issues with how one of the big shows handled something, or the direction that the theatre industry is going in, then it’s great (and quite possibly important) to talk about that, but at least try to do so without putting down the fans. And if your favorite obscure musical isn’t getting as much attention as you’d like? Make posts about it. Gush about it and talk about it. Every musical fan wants more musicals, and I’ve downloaded so many cast recordings because people I followed were passionate about them.

TL;DR, have fun. Like what you like. Discuss what you don’t, but try to be respectful. It’s way more enjoyable and relaxing to not try to live up to and arbitrary Theatre Fan Gold Standard that going to change in a few years anyway.


	6. Things to think about when writing hurt/comfort scenarios

Notes:

**Assume A is the comforter and B is the hurt one for all scenarios

**these are phrased as questions, because I don’t want to tell others how to write. Whatever answer you feel is right is right, because it’s your story.

————-

1\. Does character A know what to do when character B is panicking? Do they really? Really? Okay, why do they know that?

2\. Does A know what to do in the face of Bs illness or injury? Do they really? Really? Why do they know that?

3\. Where are the doctors and psychologists, and why have they not been called in yet? What about family members?

4\. Why isn’t B dead yet? That’s a lot of blood you just had them lose. Do you think you could maybe tone it down on the blood and still achieve the same effect? Are you sure they can survive being set on fire?

5\. I see you’ve given B terrible parents! Why are they so terrible? What’s their motivation?

6\. What could A do wrong? Like, obviously A is a Good Person, and Trying, and maybe in love with B, but how could they mishandle this awful situation you’ve put the characters in. Also, how can you use this to possibly make the scene more interesting and unique?

7\. If you have A and B falling in love or something due to this traumatic event, why is that? Also, how would said traumatic event possibly interfere? I say this knowing that a lot of people write fics in order to get their pairing to fall in love, and that can work in hurt/comfort scenarios, but sometimes it’s better to just write the characters caring about each other without any big romantic revelations.

8\. If you are using a very heavy topic, are you sure you are doing it sensitively, and in a way that’s not exploitative? This goes doubly if the goal of your fic is romance between A and B.

9\. Okay, so B has contracted the cold/flu/Black Plague and needs chicken soup and they are languishing… adorably? Do they need to be so adorable? What aspects of their predicament might be un-cute, unpleasant, or even gross? Do you want to add some of that?

10\. What is Bs breaking point? How can you show them slowly approaching, possibly resisting, and then reaching it? What kinds of specific things does your character do that show they are starting to get tired/agitated/sad/confused/overwhelmed/etc?

11\. You want A to carry B? Is that something they can actually do? Is that something they can do without struggle? ‘Cause carrying other people is kinda hard.

12\. How does A actually feel about this? Are they scared? Queasy? Bored? Disturbed? Uncertain? Overwhelmed? Tired?


	7. Why I bother to archive old works on AO3 (a rambling story involving Starlight Express)

I can remember first discovering what a cool thing fandom was back in probably 2002ish, when I was at the height of my Starlight Express phase. So here was this musical, that wasn’t even playing in my country, of which I had a much loved cast recording. I could have listened to that cast recording, and through doing so consumed all of the Starlight Express related media available to me in less than two hours. That could have been it. Instead, I came across this online community ( the internet was super new to me at the time) where there were conversations, webcomics, fic, RPs, cosplays, meta, and enough that I was able to fill up the one hour a day of computer time that my mom allotted to me for years.

(Note: I absolutely cheated on that one hour rule whenever I could.)

Then, one day, dumb fangirlish teenage me was making one of those “Purity Litmus Tests” (you know, the ones where the goal was to get a low score to show how “corrupted” you’d been by the thing?) for my geocities site, when I realized that all this fun I’d been having wouldn’t even exist if other fans weren’t out there creating stuff. I realized that when I created stuff, I was a part of that, and it was really cool.

I’ve been writing fic for a really long time. Starlight was where I got my first (admittedly kind of ridiculous) epiphany on what fandom meant, but I was playing around on fanfiction.net and a few Farscape yahoo clubs before that, putting stories out into the world. My early stories were terribly written. I can’t emphasize enough how badly written they were. There were still people who contacted me to tell me that they enjoyed them. I’ve written stuff that I’ve put a lot of effort into, and also little throw away drabbles that I jotted down in thirty minutes while stuck in an airport. I’ve written stuff that I think that would qualify as borderline good, and stuff with horrendous characterization and more typos than words. There have always been people who have said that they got some kind of pleasure from my stories.

Currently there are 57 Starlight Express stories on AO3. I’m sure that I had at least 30 up on my old gepcities site (a lot of them my own, and some that other writers had given me permission to archive). I never bothered to save them, so they’re gone, except for a couple that I’d crossposted to fanfiction.net. They really weren’t good, but who knows? Maybe there’s someone out there who just ships the heck out of Dinah/CB and would have been happy to have the fics still exist.

Anyway, I think that’s why I’m going through the effort of crossposting my tumblr fics onto AO3 now, even though some of them are already five years old, the process of moving them is boring, and they are mostly in a fandom that I’m not interested in any more. Fandom exists because people bother to build it, but periodically websites and fandom spaces get bulldozed, and tons upon tons of stuff is lost. Every contribution is valuable, because if it weren’t for those contributions, fans would only have whatever canon had to offer. AO3 is currently the closest thing fandom’s got to stable ground, so copy and pasting old stuff onto there is a worthwhile thing to do.


	8. Fandom Purity Culture and the Amateur Nature of Fic Writing

One reason (beyond the whole fiction is not reality thing) that I’m hesitant to make judgements about the moral values of writers based on their writing is how easy it is to accidentally hit the wrong note. One time, I reblogged this post about how “fan fic writers want a book report”, and somebody who read my blog very kindly responded with an honest to god book report on my latest fic. It was the best thing I’ve ever, and I was so happy about it! However, one of the themes that I was really going for with the fic was the idea that a certain adult character in the story was failing to do enough for the two child characters. I wrote it from the adult character’s perspective, so of course he felt like he was doing the right thing, but I tried to drop hints that he wasn’t. The person who wrote the “book report” was full of praise at how much the adult character cared about the child characters. She saw him as a model of good and caring adulthood!

Now, the thing I was writing about was not a hot button topic of fandom discourse. I could have written said adult character as a saint or a mustache twirling villain, and nobody would have much minded either way. I’m lucky in that respect. However, it did make me think about how careful one must be about claiming somebody is “endorsing” something with their writing, rather than realizing that fic writers are by in large amateurs, and what you think they’re trying to say might not be what they are going for at all.


	9. Infinite Cake

People in fandom talk a lot about the two cakes theory.

I’d like to propose something called the “infinite cake” theory.

If you write a fic, it’s like throwing an unending cake into the fan fic potluck. Maybe it’s a bit of a mess, but has some unique flavor elements that certain people really enjoy. Maybe it’s masterfully executed, but also a very odd and acquired taste. Maybe it’s something that tends to be craved by a large subset of the population.

Either way, once you’ve put your creation out into the world, it’s there forever unless you take it away (or the table collapses or something, rip geocities).

The story you’ve written could potentially be bringing a little slice of happiness to people even past the end of your own life.

That one really weird fic you wrote ten years ago could be exactly what somebody is currently craving, and if they find it, it’ll be the most satisfying slice of cake they’ve ever had.

That story you aren’t as proud of, the one you think has a lot of mistakes, could still be a sweet treat for somebody who likes the specific combination of ingredients you used.

The main thing is that if you’ve created any kind of fic, you’ve thrown something out into the universe that is nice and has the capacity to bring pleasure to people. It might be found and widely read, or it might remain kinda obscure, but it’s *there* and it has an unending potential to make somebody’s day better.


End file.
